JonathanK

Would this be a "3-story" house? First floor would be your main floor; Second floor would be your little air gap you're showing; third floor would be the attic space. You would draw the walls, ceiling, etc.. on it as if it is another floor in Chief? We don't get heavy into showing framing and trusses, so not 100% it will work. But that's how I'd do it.

This is a major work around, and will not look good on your plan with line weights off, but looks fine printed and with line weights on: Open the note you want to change. Go to "Note" Change the size to something like "3". Or whatever small arbitrary number you'd like. Go to "Line Style" Change the line style to whatever color you want. Change the line weight to something that fills the circle. I'm sure the others have a thought on this...

This is the one we use for the ft-in: obj = owner obj = referenced unless referenced.nil? nf = NumberFormatter.new nf.unit = "'-\"" nf.use_fractions = true nf.apply(obj.room.ceiling_height)

Edit>Preferences>General>Project Management. Uncheck "Use Chief Architect Project Management".

Thanks, @Renerabbitt. Yeah, we're aware of those settings. I think we'll have to play with it and get things dialed in a little more.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. We're looking to bill per hour for our services. The thought was to use time tracker in Chief. But after messing around with it for a little bit, it just feels like it's missing options. I would like a custom toolbar or something that shows what my total time is on the entire project. Just something to quick reference. It also feels clunky with the amount of entries per day there are. It seems like there could be functionality there to merge times or something like that. Even the sorting date and things like that are clunky. I suppose it just comes down to like what @para-CAD brought out and just export it to Excel and do my cleanup work there. I was just curious what others have done/ are doing.

Can you use AI to generate a southern yellow pine flooring texture, and just create a new texture for your models?

More just curious than anything...is anyone using the Time Tracker native to Chief? If so, do you have any tips and tricks on it? It feels woefully inadequate, but it's nice having it run automatically in the background so that our multiple designers can work on a project and not have to worry about logging time to a specific project. How do you guys log time to a project?

Chief handles pole structures way better than it used to. There is less fudging and a little more automation. You could essentially build a wall type that would do what all you want, or you could build the posts individually with the footings, and your wall type could be just the wall girts and steel. Likewise with the concrete slab. You could just have CA make it's OOB slab, or if you wanted to show the level of detail you're talking about you could use solids with expansion foam and the whole nine. I wouldn't be afraid to tackle it, I guess. But I always enjoy a good challenge

You should be able to open an X4 file with X17. There's probably going to be some conversion glitches and stuff, but you should still be able to open and work on the plan.

In X17 dishwashers are placed as a standalone item, not in cabinets like they used to be. When you sandwich them between two cabinets, it automatically places a countertop over the top of the DW.

I would build my "ramp" out of a solid. Pull a cross section through there, make it 4" thick like it would be if it was concrete, and draw it at the proper slope. That should allow you to break it in those two areas and make them flat or sloped or whatever. Although, I'm not positive if that was available on X12 or not. But that shouldn't matter. Your flat spot is going to be at the same elevation as the floor in the foyer, so you can have it run through that area with no problems.

Open the stairs, go to Stringers tab on left, then click on "Custom Stringers". For the middle section, change the count to 2...or whatever you need to get approx. 12" OC.

@Evolution I haven't looked at the plan, just looking at your postings and pictures. Is the existing structure set to have "floor supplied by room below"? That's kind of what it looks like on your last cross section you attached above.

@EmmaCox To make it easy for you, if you go to Edit>Default Settings>Floors and Rooms>Room Types, before you open the room type, you can click, hold, and drag to select multiple rooms. Then go to Edit on the right side, and edit the moldings. It works even with CTRL + click as well so you can select specific rooms you want to edit (i.e. only the bedrooms, and not the garage and attic, etc...)

@EmmaCox I think I see the issue. On your room type default box, under moldings UNCHECK the "Use Floor Defaults" box at the top. Then set the molding that you want to use for it. That should get it done for you.

@EmmaCox Are you 100% positive that you edited the molding in the room type through the Default Settings? I just tried what you said in your last post, and it works for me when I change my room type to Bedroom. Can you just do a test plan and attach it here so we can poke around? EDIT: I think I see the issue. On your room type default box, UNCHECK the "Use Floor Defaults" box. Then set the molding that you want to use for it. That should get it done for you.

I would say make sure that your walls match their walls first and foremost. Then spend a little time reviewing the roof planes on the PDF to get it to match. I took a quick look, and it's not overly complicated...I trust that you can get it with a little time and effort.

I still think I'm "young people" (even though I just turned 40), and I agree 100% on this statement. I took drafting in high school and technical college, and we did 80% hand drawing. I could nerd out on line weights all day long.

Maybe someone else knows of a way to export, tweak, and import layer sets; but I can't think of one right off the top. The other option is that if you have a plan that you've done work on that is 90% there, you can go to File>Import>Import Settings from Plan/Layout. In the dialog that pops up, you can select "Layer Sets" and it will do that for you. Also...in the Layer Display Options, near the top is "Reset Layer Names". This will reset all "Default" layer sets to have the out of the box names. Good luck!

I would do it as option 3 that you list above. I would do this as a room with the wall having the correct definition of siding on both sides, etc... Then I would use a passthrough opening to get my openings correct, and put the craftsman posts in the corners as needed. A wee bit of cleanup on the siding where the porch and house meets, and you're good. Untitled 10.zip

Another update...looks like the line weight of the arrow head is driven from the CAD, Default layer. Seems like the properties of the arrow head (regardless if it's custom or not) should be driven from the leader line or the dimension line...just like every other arrow head. Would this be considered a bug?...

It's the same with my custom "tick" for my dimension lines as well. I'm guessing people don't use this feature very often...

In the fille DBX, if you check "Use Block Fill Color" then the polyline line weight disappears. As soon as you select "Override Block Fill Color", it changes the lines of the arrow head to black, and makes them bold. There is no way to adjust this...that I can see. This is kind of annoying, as I like the simple narrow arrow head, but I want it "bolder".

If it's your template file that you're wanting to clean up, open up your template file, and then go to File>Save as Template. There is a dialog box that pops up that allows you to select everything you want to keep or remove. Part of that selection is to unlink all reference files. Then just save it as the same name, or rename it something else if you're not wanting to overwrite your old for some reason. Not sure if that's what you're looking for or not.